TYTO, THE TREESITTER

What’s it like spending months at a time up in a tree in order to save it from destruction?

Words FIONA HOWIE

When I meet Tyto, she has been living in a myrtle tree in takayna/Tarkine for 71 days. That’s over 1,700 hours. During that time, she has been bored exactly once. “I was complaining, like, “Olive, I am feeling bored!” Tyto jokes. “That happened somewhere near the beginning, for three hours, and it didn’t appear again.” takayna/Tarkine is a vast wild area, a rarity in a world where nature has increasingly been diminished and fragmented into remnant pockets. Gleaming white shores punctuated by dark jagged rocks are buffeted by the Roaring Forties (next landfall is Argentina). Rivers, darkened by tannin, wind gently through primeval forest. Cultural living sites, rock carvings and buttongrass plains mark the palawa people’s long custodianship of these lands. It’s a place that makes you feel small in space and time. Despite all this, it is not a protected area. Which explains why Tyto is in a tree.

Tyto, or Viola Barnes, has a kind face framed by greying curls, and a warm and frequent smile. She wears round spectacles. It’s a sunny summer’s day (in a place which averages around 211 rain days a year), and while I wear a T-shirt down below, Viola is rugged up in many layers. “Ernie! Just saying the name makes me smile,” she exclaims after I introduce my newborn, snuggled into his carrier.

This is a woman who has sold her home, leaving behind her much loved community in North Queensland, to make a stand for these ancient forests. The myrtle she sits in is centuries old–perhaps a sapling in the time of the Scientific Revolution.

“You think probably I’m a little off the planet. Before I climbed up the first time, I was like “Hey, is it alright if I climb up?” And I asked, “Look, could you reveal your name to me?” And this name, Staghorn—vroom!–stuck in my head. I’m very drawn to Staghorn. He is very much like a friend to me.”

Tyto was no stranger to treesitting before this vigil, with the odd stint here and there. “Did you plan to come up for so long?” I ask. “No way! I thought, let’s see how it goes.” A former tree sit occurred in a giant eucalypt at a nearby clearfell. “They were fierce–very much like, yep, ready to defend! This feels very different, like being embraced and welcomed and part of it. It is very, very special.”

Tyto first arrived in takayna/Tarkine four years ago, after hearing about it at the Cygnet Folk Festival. She was immediately hooked. After three years of flying backwards and forwards to the forest, Tyto decided to trust her instincts, leaving behind her friends and home. “It [flying] was not good for the environment either. I had to follow my heart.” She even lived in her car for eight months, driving from action to action.

On my last visit, this still-threatened area was inaccessible, barred by a boom gate owned by the mining company MMG. At that time, over seventy people from all walks of life—tourism operators, teachers, doctors, social workers, retirees and university students, among others—had been arrested for crossing the gate and refusing to leave, protesting against a planned tailings dam which would destroy these forests.

The dam would result in the destruction of swathes of fairytale forest. Gnarled, towering myrtles that predate colonisation by many hundreds of years would be obliterated, as would tree ferns as high as ceilings, logs covered in moss and lichen.

HOLDING A TREE VIGIL IS MORE SOCIAL than you’d think. People sometimes stay the night down below, or in a separate treetop, close enough for a chat. Or pop up for a cup of tea. At one point, two visitors joined Tyto for an arboreal game of five hundred (“a highlight”). Another time, folk musicians played at Staghorn’s base. Tyto is a talented watercolourist who draws inspiration from her scenery, painting real and mythical creatures onto natural backgrounds. On the day we visit, the nearby base camp is quiet—Bob Brown Foundation campaigner Charley Gros is the only one around. The weekend before, it was bustling with over fifty visitors.

Tyto’s neighbours include a nesting family of black cockatoos. Other avian regulars include Tasmanian thornbills (“Just love them, they are such friendly critters. I can even communicate with them,” Tyto says, demonstrating their call), grey fantails, shrike thrushes, silvereyes and honeyeaters. There have also been green-blue and golden-brown dragonflies, caterpillars, and a lone tree skink.

It is only because of the discovery of the presence of one special bird, and some extremely dedicated campaigning, that this Tolkienesque forest has not yet been destroyed to make way for the tailings dam. One night, BBF campaigner Charley heard an odd, screeching noise, which he recorded on his phone. He later discovered it to be the call of the mysterious masked owl, Tyto novaehollandiae castanops—a rare bird previously thought not to live in rainforest.

Proving the masked owl’s presence was a long shot, which involved leaving five acoustic recorders in different areas of the mining lease to record every night between dusk and dawn for five months. A catch was that batteries had to be changed every week. This meant walking into remote forest seven kilometres behind a locked boom gate—not knowing whether any masked owls would be recorded. The gambit paid off, with over 470 masked owl calls collected—a remarkably high number, quite possibly the largest Tasmanian masked owl dataset that has ever been collected. Without the more than seventy protesters arrested defending takayna/Tarkine, Charley says it wouldn’t have been possible to gather so much data. Preliminary works by MMG that had been carried out were consequently ruled illegal in a court challenge, with more adequate environmental assessment a condition of continuing works.

If the federal government approves the new tailings dam, up to 285ha will be cleared. MMG says the dam is needed to operate the mine and support local jobs. Environmentalists believe this is a cheap option; alternative technologies could instead be used, such as paste-filling, which would avoid the need to clear old-growth forest.

From the vantage point of Tullah, the nearby mining town, the forests look abundant. From the point of view of industry, perhaps, it might seem like a small slice out of a large wild area. Whether the site is inside or outside the boundary of takayna/ Tarkine is also disputed by some. For Charley and Tyto, who grew up in Europe, where forests like this don’t exist anymore— certainly not on this scale–the balance looks quite different.

“I’d say the most special thing about the Tarkine is that it’s still there,” says Tyto, pausing. “If there were still old-growth forest in Germany—the old oaks and birches and beeches—I probably would still be there. There is hardly anything like this left in the world anymore. I have travelled quite a lot in my life, and this is one of the most special places I have witnessed. I don’t want to see this go.”

Late last year, Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek visited Tullah, but declined Bob Brown’s invitation to see the forests. (In 1986, another environment minister, Graham Richardson, described himself as a ‘convert’ after taking up Bob Brown and Geoff Law’s invitation to see the old-growth forests in lutruwita/Tasmania). Plibersek was instead sighted dining with mining executives at Tullah’s Lakeside Lodge. Trying to picture how her visit might have otherwise unfolded, I ask which part of the site she would have been taken to. “Well, that’s the thing … anywhere you go in the forest is special,” says Charley. “It’s full of wonders, dotted with myrtles well over 500 years old. It’s home to a wealth of animals and plants … some rare, some widespread, all with intrinsic value.”

As I write these words, Plibersek’s final decision is yet to be handed down.

It is hard to articulate the value of nature. Scientific language (conservation value, endangered species) isn’t quite adequate. Without these places, we lose something of our own humanity, believes Tyto. “This is one of the last wild places in the world. If we don’t have these places bringing us back down to our roots, life is just wholly superficial. There’s not much left for human beings that is real. We have to protect it.”

(Ed’s note: Tyto ended her courageous treesit on March 23 just after Fiona met her, having spent 72 days in Staghorn’s branches).

CONTRIBUTOR: Taswegian Fiona Howie is a mum who tries to introduce her newborn baby Ernie to nature, while generally failing in attempts to induce him to sleep.

Beyond Cradle Mountain, Tasmania’s Overland Track winds south, providing public huts for all walkers, without sky-high fees